Nothing. Nothing happened. No news org in 2015, or for who knows how long going forward, will stop using click-bait headlines. Buzzfeed et. al. have proven that it works way to well.
But, thanks for clicking through to this post. Read the rest of the blog and enjoy! Hope to see you back soon!!
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Keep The Pressure On For Healthier School Lunches
Have you ever looked around a room and wondered "Why does everybody hate me and think I'm just out to get people?" and then immediately turn around and try and make a fool out of yourself trying to make somebody else look bad? If so, you might be a GOP member of the 114th Congress.
Aside from all of the normal shenanigans that the GOP have pulled against the White House, or the Obama family, I think this one really is the dumbest of them all: rolling back healthy eating standards in school lunches. I mean, of course! It makes perfect sense! We only have a growing obesity problem in this country! Why in the world would we want to impose standards that help make kids healthier! Pizza and chips forever!
An article in Politico posted on 12/30 discusses how the new Congress wants to roll back some of the changes from the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. This law, championed by the First Lady, issued a number of changes to the school lunch program to help encourage more whole grains, fruits and vegetables, reduce sodium, and in general make a more balanced meal for students. All of these goals are laudable, the bill passed with 17 Republican votes in the House and passed the Senate passed the bill by Unanimous Consent (Gov Track).
The article raises some interesting points and some legitimate concerns. There is the issue with cost: healthier options required by the bill can cost districts more. I don't have an issue with some of the districts claiming hardship on the cost though I'd rather see Congress work to find money to help fund the healthy options and not just give the districts an out. Of course, including funding for things at a national level right now is the kiss of death for the Majority party.
Concerns about how healthy students are eating are not new. They were raised back in the 1940s when the National School Lunch Act was first passed stating that the bill was a "measure of national security". At the time, the concern was draft eligible students were being turned away because they weren't eating a well balanced enough diet. Today, based on the assessment of the group Mission Readiness, it is due to obesity.
While I can appreciate that some districts are cash strapped and that money is hard to find, simply giving up and asking to have sections of the new bill rolled back is the easy way out. Groups lobbying for the changes have already stated that they are seeing the Secretary of Education offer waivers on portions of the law to help districts out. This seems like a reasonable compromise to help get districts started.
Simply put, we need to do more as a society to help children, and really all of us, eat healthier.
Obesity is a problem in this country that is not going away. Cheep, over processed food are easy to come by but that shouldn't be the crutch that we lean on. We need to do more to make sure that we have a society that is well fed and healthy or the long term issues from this are going to be incredible. Rising health care costs and lower life expectancy are two of the most obvious consequences.
It also starts at home and with all of us too. Teach your children to eat healthy foods and learn to enjoy healthier foods. A great crunchy thing snack instead of a bag of chips could be bag of carrots or celery. (Full disclosure: I'm just as guilty with the "ooo...chips" and devouring a bag. I need to get better at this too.) It also may mean paying a little bit more in property tax to help fund food programs for the schools. Given the bulk districts can buy in, it would likely only be a few dollars per year per household. Spread over all of us, this is not a huge cost.
I hope that the 114th Congress doesn't gut this bill too much. The goals are laudable and while the implementation may not have been perfect in 2010, scrapping it or letting districts off the hook is not the answer. We all need to do better to make sure we and the children in our lives are eating healthier.
The article raises some interesting points and some legitimate concerns. There is the issue with cost: healthier options required by the bill can cost districts more. I don't have an issue with some of the districts claiming hardship on the cost though I'd rather see Congress work to find money to help fund the healthy options and not just give the districts an out. Of course, including funding for things at a national level right now is the kiss of death for the Majority party.
Concerns about how healthy students are eating are not new. They were raised back in the 1940s when the National School Lunch Act was first passed stating that the bill was a "measure of national security". At the time, the concern was draft eligible students were being turned away because they weren't eating a well balanced enough diet. Today, based on the assessment of the group Mission Readiness, it is due to obesity.
While I can appreciate that some districts are cash strapped and that money is hard to find, simply giving up and asking to have sections of the new bill rolled back is the easy way out. Groups lobbying for the changes have already stated that they are seeing the Secretary of Education offer waivers on portions of the law to help districts out. This seems like a reasonable compromise to help get districts started.
Simply put, we need to do more as a society to help children, and really all of us, eat healthier.
Obesity is a problem in this country that is not going away. Cheep, over processed food are easy to come by but that shouldn't be the crutch that we lean on. We need to do more to make sure that we have a society that is well fed and healthy or the long term issues from this are going to be incredible. Rising health care costs and lower life expectancy are two of the most obvious consequences.
It also starts at home and with all of us too. Teach your children to eat healthy foods and learn to enjoy healthier foods. A great crunchy thing snack instead of a bag of chips could be bag of carrots or celery. (Full disclosure: I'm just as guilty with the "ooo...chips" and devouring a bag. I need to get better at this too.) It also may mean paying a little bit more in property tax to help fund food programs for the schools. Given the bulk districts can buy in, it would likely only be a few dollars per year per household. Spread over all of us, this is not a huge cost.
I hope that the 114th Congress doesn't gut this bill too much. The goals are laudable and while the implementation may not have been perfect in 2010, scrapping it or letting districts off the hook is not the answer. We all need to do better to make sure we and the children in our lives are eating healthier.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
WaPo Highlights End Of Life Care Problem
The Washington Post had an excellent article Friday on end of life care in America. It focused mostly on how doctors or nurses, particularly in an ICU, are faced with agonizing situations due to a patient's wishes not being clear when it comes to what they want at the end of the their life.
The important take away on this story for me is that we really need to address our end of life directives with families and friends so they understand what is wanted at the end of life. (For the record, I have no interest in living on machine in a vegetative or non-recoverable state. My wife and I have talked about that). I get that the conversation may not be easy to have, and it probably won't be fun, but it is necessary. With all of the medical advancements that we have, it would be easy to prolong somebody's life far beyond what they may have wanted. And the suffering that can introduce, for both the patient and the family, is tragic.
As our country ages, these discussions need to happen and they need to happen with doctors as well as family members. It's sad that Medicare is only "considering" adding reimbursement starting in 2016 for this type of counselling. It could have, and should have, been added much earlier but it was too easy for people to start screaming about "death panels" and the idea was dropped. Having a conversation about what you want the end of your life to look like is not a "death panel". It's a smart, thoughtful decision to help guide your family through what is a miserable and stressful time.
I also believe that the other side of this is that there needs to be more laws in place like Oregon's "Death With Dignity" law. This allows patients who have a terminal disease to end their life on their terms, with help from the medical community, to avoid the suffering of a debilitating disease.
Facing your own mortality is something that is probably not a real settling thought but it is a reality that you cannot escape. It is better to make sure that the people whom you trust to take care of you understand what you want. If you want people to take every measure possible from tried and true to experimental to keep you going, that's perfectly OK. You just have to make sure people know that. If you wind up in a coma and after 2 weeks doctors say there is no hope of ever recovering and, if in that case, you want the plug pulled, that's perfectly OK, too. Just make sure people understand.
We aren't going to live forever and you never know when the end will come. Do yourself and your family a favor and make sure people understand how you want your life to look when the time comes.
Information about Advanced Directives and other end of life care can be found at the National Institute of Health's website.
The important take away on this story for me is that we really need to address our end of life directives with families and friends so they understand what is wanted at the end of life. (For the record, I have no interest in living on machine in a vegetative or non-recoverable state. My wife and I have talked about that). I get that the conversation may not be easy to have, and it probably won't be fun, but it is necessary. With all of the medical advancements that we have, it would be easy to prolong somebody's life far beyond what they may have wanted. And the suffering that can introduce, for both the patient and the family, is tragic.
As our country ages, these discussions need to happen and they need to happen with doctors as well as family members. It's sad that Medicare is only "considering" adding reimbursement starting in 2016 for this type of counselling. It could have, and should have, been added much earlier but it was too easy for people to start screaming about "death panels" and the idea was dropped. Having a conversation about what you want the end of your life to look like is not a "death panel". It's a smart, thoughtful decision to help guide your family through what is a miserable and stressful time.
I also believe that the other side of this is that there needs to be more laws in place like Oregon's "Death With Dignity" law. This allows patients who have a terminal disease to end their life on their terms, with help from the medical community, to avoid the suffering of a debilitating disease.
Facing your own mortality is something that is probably not a real settling thought but it is a reality that you cannot escape. It is better to make sure that the people whom you trust to take care of you understand what you want. If you want people to take every measure possible from tried and true to experimental to keep you going, that's perfectly OK. You just have to make sure people know that. If you wind up in a coma and after 2 weeks doctors say there is no hope of ever recovering and, if in that case, you want the plug pulled, that's perfectly OK, too. Just make sure people understand.
We aren't going to live forever and you never know when the end will come. Do yourself and your family a favor and make sure people understand how you want your life to look when the time comes.
Information about Advanced Directives and other end of life care can be found at the National Institute of Health's website.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
WaPo Swings and Misses on Aviation Hit Piece
The Washington Post published an article on Tuesday about the plane crash in Maryland that had as its base premise that one of the reasons small planes crash so much is because they are flown by "amateur pilots, who don’t have to log as many flight hours to be certified". What an astonishingly stupid thing to write.
This crash in Maryland is a sad and tragic situation no matter how you look at it. But to say that general aviation pilots are some how amateur or have to work less for the certification is just lazy reporting. It would be no different to write that during a car crash if the driver wasn't a bus driver or semi driver, that they were an "amateur driver and don't have to log as many training hours to get their license".
It's not difficult to look up the rules that people have to follow to become pilots. There's passing a verbal exam, a written test, spending at least 50 hours in the air meeting various requirements and being able to demonstrate various maneuvers, similar to a drivers test. And that's just for the basic Private Pilot license without an instrument rating. It would have been even better to talk to a flight instructor to understand how the rules are applied and training works. But that would have destroyed the narrative.
In addition, unlike drivers, pilots have to "stay current". Every 2 to 5 years, depending on age, you have to have a physical to make sure its still ok for you to operate an aircraft. Every 2 years you have to demonstrate to an instructor that you are still proficient. If you haven't flown in certain conditions or in a particular type of aircraft in the last 90 days, you have to fly, at minimum, 3 take offs and landings in that craft in those conditions before you are allowed to take passengers. Every pilot, regardless of their license type, has to follow these rules.
Could you imagine how many people would lose their license if every two years you had to go in for a road test and if you weren't found proficient that you would need to take additional training? How many less distracted driver incidents would there be? How many mistakes that people make would be cleared up?
The author also says "Small planes also land at small airports that may not even have paved runways". Nothing else about it, just that they land at airports without paved runways. Great! I hear some people take cars and drive them on roads that aren't even paved! There is an insinuation in there that because the airstrip isn't paved obviously the pilots that fly out of there are nothing more than wild cowboys without a care for anyone.
It's a shame that this was able to be written and published without any interaction with somebody in the aviation community. General aviation pilots are dedicated people who love their hobby and want to make sure it is as safe as possible. Just like any human though, pilots can make mistakes and accidents do happen. But we all do share the same goal: we all want to make sure that we and our passengers arrive safely at the end of our trip.
This crash in Maryland is a sad and tragic situation no matter how you look at it. But to say that general aviation pilots are some how amateur or have to work less for the certification is just lazy reporting. It would be no different to write that during a car crash if the driver wasn't a bus driver or semi driver, that they were an "amateur driver and don't have to log as many training hours to get their license".
It's not difficult to look up the rules that people have to follow to become pilots. There's passing a verbal exam, a written test, spending at least 50 hours in the air meeting various requirements and being able to demonstrate various maneuvers, similar to a drivers test. And that's just for the basic Private Pilot license without an instrument rating. It would have been even better to talk to a flight instructor to understand how the rules are applied and training works. But that would have destroyed the narrative.
In addition, unlike drivers, pilots have to "stay current". Every 2 to 5 years, depending on age, you have to have a physical to make sure its still ok for you to operate an aircraft. Every 2 years you have to demonstrate to an instructor that you are still proficient. If you haven't flown in certain conditions or in a particular type of aircraft in the last 90 days, you have to fly, at minimum, 3 take offs and landings in that craft in those conditions before you are allowed to take passengers. Every pilot, regardless of their license type, has to follow these rules.
Could you imagine how many people would lose their license if every two years you had to go in for a road test and if you weren't found proficient that you would need to take additional training? How many less distracted driver incidents would there be? How many mistakes that people make would be cleared up?
The author also says "Small planes also land at small airports that may not even have paved runways". Nothing else about it, just that they land at airports without paved runways. Great! I hear some people take cars and drive them on roads that aren't even paved! There is an insinuation in there that because the airstrip isn't paved obviously the pilots that fly out of there are nothing more than wild cowboys without a care for anyone.
It's a shame that this was able to be written and published without any interaction with somebody in the aviation community. General aviation pilots are dedicated people who love their hobby and want to make sure it is as safe as possible. Just like any human though, pilots can make mistakes and accidents do happen. But we all do share the same goal: we all want to make sure that we and our passengers arrive safely at the end of our trip.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
I Like Winter & Book Ideas Please!!
I like winter. There. I said it. That usually gets me funny looks in this state, but I do actually enjoy winter.
I did enjoy the winters in Michigan more, especially in Houghton when I was in college. I loved the snow totals (250+" per year) and it was almost always warm enough to go out and have fun. Here in Minnesota it's pretty easy to get a winter of brown grass and a week below 0. I know people don't believe me, but having snow on the ground really makes the cold more bearable.
One of the biggest reasons I like winter is that it gets dark earlier. I love going out and looking up at the stars and its a lot easier to do when its dark by 5:00pm instead of 10:30pm. It also gives me a chance to read, a lot, without feeling like I'm missing out by not being outside. I have a hard time justifying curling up on a couch with a book in summer around here.
Which leads to the second part of this post: what book recommendations do you have? Given the number of comments I've gotten on the first posts, I'm not exactly expecting the servers to get flooded with responses here, but I figured I'd thrown the question out.
I did enjoy the winters in Michigan more, especially in Houghton when I was in college. I loved the snow totals (250+" per year) and it was almost always warm enough to go out and have fun. Here in Minnesota it's pretty easy to get a winter of brown grass and a week below 0. I know people don't believe me, but having snow on the ground really makes the cold more bearable.
One of the biggest reasons I like winter is that it gets dark earlier. I love going out and looking up at the stars and its a lot easier to do when its dark by 5:00pm instead of 10:30pm. It also gives me a chance to read, a lot, without feeling like I'm missing out by not being outside. I have a hard time justifying curling up on a couch with a book in summer around here.
Which leads to the second part of this post: what book recommendations do you have? Given the number of comments I've gotten on the first posts, I'm not exactly expecting the servers to get flooded with responses here, but I figured I'd thrown the question out.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Meeting New Neighbors
Brooklyn Park, MN has a program to help welcome new people to the neighborhood. They give you a tote bag full of coupons, maps, a coffee mug, flyers about the city, etc. A welcome kit. To hand them out, they recruit volunteers in the neighborhoods to go visit the new neighbors. It's a great way to meet new people and feel like you're part of your community. My wife (Sarah) and I signed up as volunteers a couple weeks ago. They said it wouldn't take much time at all.
If they all go like our first one did, we're going to need to budget a lot more time than we expected.
We were given four bags to drop off to people who had moved in recently and we figured we could get at least three if not all four done Thursday night, just depending on how it went. We stopped at the first house and introduced ourselves and said why we were there. The woman that answered the door was little confused how we knew they had just moved in (we don't have our ID badges from the city yet) but after explaining how we knew she invited us in and went to get her husband so we could meet him. They both spoke English very well but with an accent. They had mentioned they had came to this country from somewhere else but didn't say where at first (or if they did, I didn't remember).
We had a wonderful conversation over Turkish coffee and quickly were starting to realize we may only get one more house visited tonight, which was fine. They were a wonderful couple with two young children and wanted to learn about the city and the neighborhood. While he had lived in Minnesota for 7 months, it was in New Hope. She has just joined with the children two weeks earlier from where they had been living.
After the coffee was done, there were many apologizes that the house wasn't more put together but they insisted we have drinks with them and he ran out to the store to pick up some beer. Then they quickly put together a dinner for us. Soup and sandwiches came together fast. For two people to stop whatever they were doing that evening to entertain two strangers who stopped by to welcome them was wonderful. It felt like they were welcoming us and much as we were them. It was such an fun night.
At one point he asked what we type of work we did. I said that I was a computer engineer working with power grid management software. He replied "Oh, like PLCs and SCADA software". That really caught me off guard. Those are two acronyms that you don't really hear thrown around unless you work in that industry.
Then the real kicker came when he said "Yeah, I use to work on the Iraqi National Grid, before April 2003". Both Sarah and I must have had the most stunned looked on our faces. We've both had friends that served in the US Armed Forces in Iraq but we've never sat and talked with somebody who was in the country, in Baghdad, as the Marine Corps was moving in on the city.
The stories they had were wonderful to hear. Working with our forces to help rebuild their country, getting to come to America, living and working in the Mid Atlantic region, and then moving to Minnesota. You can always learn from somebody who has a different background than you but what we learned that night makes me appreciate even more what we have here. Hearing stories of being afraid or the gut reactions to loud bangs and shaking were so eye opening.
We ended up staying over three and a half hours. We didn't make it to any other houses that night but that's ok. We've made plans to get together with them again and have them over to our place.
I know the point of the Neighbor Connect program is to help new residents feel welcome in their community and to help the people who have lived here reach out to the new folks moving in. I have no doubt that it will help our city grow and be a better place. But if the other people in this program have even half the experience that Sarah and I did Brooklyn Park is going to be greatest city in Minnesota.
If they all go like our first one did, we're going to need to budget a lot more time than we expected.
We were given four bags to drop off to people who had moved in recently and we figured we could get at least three if not all four done Thursday night, just depending on how it went. We stopped at the first house and introduced ourselves and said why we were there. The woman that answered the door was little confused how we knew they had just moved in (we don't have our ID badges from the city yet) but after explaining how we knew she invited us in and went to get her husband so we could meet him. They both spoke English very well but with an accent. They had mentioned they had came to this country from somewhere else but didn't say where at first (or if they did, I didn't remember).
We had a wonderful conversation over Turkish coffee and quickly were starting to realize we may only get one more house visited tonight, which was fine. They were a wonderful couple with two young children and wanted to learn about the city and the neighborhood. While he had lived in Minnesota for 7 months, it was in New Hope. She has just joined with the children two weeks earlier from where they had been living.
After the coffee was done, there were many apologizes that the house wasn't more put together but they insisted we have drinks with them and he ran out to the store to pick up some beer. Then they quickly put together a dinner for us. Soup and sandwiches came together fast. For two people to stop whatever they were doing that evening to entertain two strangers who stopped by to welcome them was wonderful. It felt like they were welcoming us and much as we were them. It was such an fun night.
At one point he asked what we type of work we did. I said that I was a computer engineer working with power grid management software. He replied "Oh, like PLCs and SCADA software". That really caught me off guard. Those are two acronyms that you don't really hear thrown around unless you work in that industry.
Then the real kicker came when he said "Yeah, I use to work on the Iraqi National Grid, before April 2003". Both Sarah and I must have had the most stunned looked on our faces. We've both had friends that served in the US Armed Forces in Iraq but we've never sat and talked with somebody who was in the country, in Baghdad, as the Marine Corps was moving in on the city.
The stories they had were wonderful to hear. Working with our forces to help rebuild their country, getting to come to America, living and working in the Mid Atlantic region, and then moving to Minnesota. You can always learn from somebody who has a different background than you but what we learned that night makes me appreciate even more what we have here. Hearing stories of being afraid or the gut reactions to loud bangs and shaking were so eye opening.
We ended up staying over three and a half hours. We didn't make it to any other houses that night but that's ok. We've made plans to get together with them again and have them over to our place.
I know the point of the Neighbor Connect program is to help new residents feel welcome in their community and to help the people who have lived here reach out to the new folks moving in. I have no doubt that it will help our city grow and be a better place. But if the other people in this program have even half the experience that Sarah and I did Brooklyn Park is going to be greatest city in Minnesota.
Friday, December 5, 2014
"The dawn of Orion and a new age of American Space exploration"
I've always been interested in space and space exploration. Seeing what's out there beyond our tiny, little world is just amazing. Other have describe it far more poetically that I ever could (For example, Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot). I love looking up and wondering "How far does it go?" and "How far will we go?"
I was born in 1982, 10 years after we last walked on the Moon. Since that time, humans have been in Low Earth Orbit. Our unmanned spacecraft have done wonderful, amazing things: Cassini, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, Voyagers 1 and 2, New Horizons, and how many more that I can't think of right now. But it always felt like something was missing.
I've watched a lot of shows and specials on the 1960s space program. Even though I wasn't alive, I could still feel fear that the Soviets inspired in us with Sputnik and listened to my Dad's stories about it, the inspiration in the challenge that President Kennedy laid out, the thrill of watching the Saturn V heave off of the launch pad, the awe at the first pictures of Earth from Lunar orbit, and the anticipation of the first live pictures from the Moon. What a time that would have been to be alive.
But watching now, it always feels like something is missing. We went to the moon. We've walked on another celestial body. Left flags, footprints, and buggies behind. Proof that we were there. And now, Low Earth Orbit. I'm not trying to belittle the science and research being done on the International Space Station. What we're learning is invaluable. But it felt like we had sailed in the ocean that is universe to the next island over and now we were afraid to leave the coast line.
Following the Return to Flight after Columbia (STS-107), I watched very shuttle launch, either on TV or online (I never made it to Florida to watch an actual launch). They had already announced the program was ending so I wanted to get as many in as I could. Every one was exciting and a thrill to watch. We're going to take 6 or 7 people and strap them in to this thing smaller than an 747 and fling it out of this world and have it orbit around for a while, then come back and land. It's an amazing thing and was always so much fun to watch.
While watching Atlantis launch for the final time on STS-135, one of my friends and I lamented the lack of America's ability to send astronauts into space. Sure the country had been there before, without a manned vehicle, in the gap between Apollo and the Shuttle, but this seemed different. There was still a desire to go and explore and spend the money to do so then. In the political climate in 2010, there didn't seem like there was much hope. That didn't improve as time went on and budget cuts struck deeper.
I never really had faith that Orion would launch. I wanted it to. Badly. But I didn't want to get my hopes up. As time went on and more and more of it came together more and more of me started to believe "maybe we can do this". The cross country trip to Kennedy Space Center, a tour of where we were going. Then finally in June of this year, the drop test happened. To me, that was the biggest sign yet maybe we could do this. When the rocket was turned vertical in October and the mating completed in November, it was inevitable. Orion would fly, and soon.
Watching that launch was incredible. Just amazing. I mean, rocket launches are never boring, but there was something more to this one. This is the capsule that will carry humans back to the Moon. It will carry humans to an asteroid. It will carry humans to Mars. It was inspiring. Then finally, to hear that call to fire the second stage and leave Low Earth Orbit. The first time a human rated craft has done that in 42 years. Amazing.
I realize there is still a lot of time for things to go wrong. The first human flight isn't planned for another 7 years in 2021 on EM-2. Plenty of time for this to get scrapped, budgets yanked away, or any number of other things to go wrong. But after today it almost has an air of inevitability about it. For the first time since I've been alive, I truly believe we'll go back to the Moon and beyond. We'll be able to go to Mars and find the rovers we've sent there. And what a selfie that'll be: an astronaut with their hand draped around Curiosity's mast cam.
So here's to exploring, to dreaming, to daring to do the things that are hard, to the struggles along the way that we will overcome, and most importantly to the joys of discovery that are out there beyond our pale blue dot.
I was born in 1982, 10 years after we last walked on the Moon. Since that time, humans have been in Low Earth Orbit. Our unmanned spacecraft have done wonderful, amazing things: Cassini, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, Voyagers 1 and 2, New Horizons, and how many more that I can't think of right now. But it always felt like something was missing.
I've watched a lot of shows and specials on the 1960s space program. Even though I wasn't alive, I could still feel fear that the Soviets inspired in us with Sputnik and listened to my Dad's stories about it, the inspiration in the challenge that President Kennedy laid out, the thrill of watching the Saturn V heave off of the launch pad, the awe at the first pictures of Earth from Lunar orbit, and the anticipation of the first live pictures from the Moon. What a time that would have been to be alive.
But watching now, it always feels like something is missing. We went to the moon. We've walked on another celestial body. Left flags, footprints, and buggies behind. Proof that we were there. And now, Low Earth Orbit. I'm not trying to belittle the science and research being done on the International Space Station. What we're learning is invaluable. But it felt like we had sailed in the ocean that is universe to the next island over and now we were afraid to leave the coast line.
Following the Return to Flight after Columbia (STS-107), I watched very shuttle launch, either on TV or online (I never made it to Florida to watch an actual launch). They had already announced the program was ending so I wanted to get as many in as I could. Every one was exciting and a thrill to watch. We're going to take 6 or 7 people and strap them in to this thing smaller than an 747 and fling it out of this world and have it orbit around for a while, then come back and land. It's an amazing thing and was always so much fun to watch.
While watching Atlantis launch for the final time on STS-135, one of my friends and I lamented the lack of America's ability to send astronauts into space. Sure the country had been there before, without a manned vehicle, in the gap between Apollo and the Shuttle, but this seemed different. There was still a desire to go and explore and spend the money to do so then. In the political climate in 2010, there didn't seem like there was much hope. That didn't improve as time went on and budget cuts struck deeper.
I never really had faith that Orion would launch. I wanted it to. Badly. But I didn't want to get my hopes up. As time went on and more and more of it came together more and more of me started to believe "maybe we can do this". The cross country trip to Kennedy Space Center, a tour of where we were going. Then finally in June of this year, the drop test happened. To me, that was the biggest sign yet maybe we could do this. When the rocket was turned vertical in October and the mating completed in November, it was inevitable. Orion would fly, and soon.
Watching that launch was incredible. Just amazing. I mean, rocket launches are never boring, but there was something more to this one. This is the capsule that will carry humans back to the Moon. It will carry humans to an asteroid. It will carry humans to Mars. It was inspiring. Then finally, to hear that call to fire the second stage and leave Low Earth Orbit. The first time a human rated craft has done that in 42 years. Amazing.
I realize there is still a lot of time for things to go wrong. The first human flight isn't planned for another 7 years in 2021 on EM-2. Plenty of time for this to get scrapped, budgets yanked away, or any number of other things to go wrong. But after today it almost has an air of inevitability about it. For the first time since I've been alive, I truly believe we'll go back to the Moon and beyond. We'll be able to go to Mars and find the rovers we've sent there. And what a selfie that'll be: an astronaut with their hand draped around Curiosity's mast cam.
So here's to exploring, to dreaming, to daring to do the things that are hard, to the struggles along the way that we will overcome, and most importantly to the joys of discovery that are out there beyond our pale blue dot.
First
I've wanted to create something like this but never have. Mostly because I didn't think anybody really cared what I had to say. Now, while I still doubt people really care what I have to say, I want to write something anyway.
Over the last few days I've had a few stories that I've wanted to share where Twitter just wasn't the right venue with it's character limit, I'm not on Facebook, and well, I needed some place to write so this looks good.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to go with this. There will probably be posts about politics/news since I follow that closely, sports teams I like, science (especially space related), books I'm reading, stories about things in my personal life that I think are interesting, and who knows what else.
Feel free to comment on something I write, I'm always up for conversation, discussion, and disagreement. Hearing different points of view and opinions is what helps us grow as people and either reaffirm what we believe or learn something new. Either way, it's a good thing. I won't tolerate a flame war or name calling.
It really comes down to a simple concept:
Discussion and disagreement are good.
Argument, playground bickering, "LALALA!!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU" are bad.
Also, since I'm still trying to figure out how I want the page to look, this seemed like a good post to write to get an idea of how the layout is going to work.
So here we go!
-Matt
Over the last few days I've had a few stories that I've wanted to share where Twitter just wasn't the right venue with it's character limit, I'm not on Facebook, and well, I needed some place to write so this looks good.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to go with this. There will probably be posts about politics/news since I follow that closely, sports teams I like, science (especially space related), books I'm reading, stories about things in my personal life that I think are interesting, and who knows what else.
Feel free to comment on something I write, I'm always up for conversation, discussion, and disagreement. Hearing different points of view and opinions is what helps us grow as people and either reaffirm what we believe or learn something new. Either way, it's a good thing. I won't tolerate a flame war or name calling.
It really comes down to a simple concept:
Discussion and disagreement are good.
Argument, playground bickering, "LALALA!!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU" are bad.
Also, since I'm still trying to figure out how I want the page to look, this seemed like a good post to write to get an idea of how the layout is going to work.
So here we go!
-Matt
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